[Gsoc] Re: introductions, please

[Uli Fouquet]

Hi everybody,

On Wednesday, 09.05.2007, 00:04 +0200 Martijn Faassen wrote:

> I hope I'm reaching our summer of code students this way.

You hit, at least partly ;-)

> Students, if
> you haven't already, please subscribe to the gsoc at zope.org mailing
> list so we can have discussions about the Google Summer of Code as
> relating to Zope here.

I already did, and yes, I think this list would be a fine place for
zope-related gsoc stuff. In the last weeks, however, the list was quite
quiet.

> We're currently in an interim period lasting until may 28 where the
> students are supposed to be learning more about their project
> communities. I've indeed seen some students, but not all, pop up on
> various Zope related mailing lists. Others have been more quiet. I'd
> prefer to hear some noise from you guys. Noise (if at least somewhat
> on-topic) is good for open source communities.

I see the point. However, even in open source communities too much noise
can be a problem too. Anyway, I might start right now making an idiot of
myself, to become - at one very, very distant day - as brilliant as
Martijn ;-)

The problem with making-noise for non-gurus is, that there are many
excellent brains out on the lists, so I generally prefer to listen
instead of telling others what to do, simply, because others can do
better.

For now, I might introduce myself with a very short sketch of my project
and some trivia. I would like to introduce the project in technical
terms deeper around the 28th of May and then, indeed, also on the zope3
list.

Please let me tell you in advance, that I was very excited about my
project to be chosen to participate in the GSOC. Also the list of
mentors is the most excellent who-is-who of zope developers one can
think of. It is an honour to work with you guys. My personal mentor will
be Phillip von Weitershausen, as you know one of the most active and
brilliant grok developers. I am very happy to work with you, Phillip.

As some of you might have heard, my project is 'the other' grok project,
targetting the implementation of an interface for grok. 'Interface'
means an administration UI for installing and other most important
administrative things you can do with zope3 components/applications.

Beside this, I will try to improve the documentation (you know, all the
XXX in the tutorial) and try to integrate some frequently asked zope3
components. 

Currently, I am trying to find out what 'frequently asked' components
means, to focus in the result on 'most frequently asked' components.

As said in Martijns Mail, the interim period until May 28 is supposed to
'get used' to the community and the projects environments. I am
currently doing that by reading the most important mailing lists,
(re)reading Phillips excellent zope3-book and trying to be a good
evangelist in the local community.

This might be the place for some trivia. As some of you might already
know, I am living in Bonn, the former capital of Western Germany, a town
of a few hundredthousands of inhibitants located in the south of
Cologne. It is part of the Rheinland, the area which also includes the
Neanderthal. 

I am currently doing my Ph.D. at the local university and my hobbies are
literature, zope and soaps (yes, the nifty little soap-operas from
different countries). I earn my money doing systems administration
(Linux only) and programming (mostly python/zope-related, but also some
stuff in Perl, Java, C, C++ and even, sorry, PHP) on a freelancer-basis.

Thanks to Aroldo Souza-Leites tireless exertions we have not only the
bones of the Neanderthaler-caveman here in Rheinland, but also a vivid
zope user group, which at the moment tends to become a _grok_ user
group ;-) The meeting last month, where I had the prvilege to give a
short introduction into grok, was dedicated to grok and saw more
interested participants, than any meeting before. This was really
astonishing! It seems, that people just waited for grok to start to deal
with zope3. Someone brought also a club (fortunately, nobody was
injured ;-)

The short talk on grok I had the chance to give on the last meeting will
be continued this month.

On the initiative of Aroldo (again) we are currently planning a
grok-sprint for the late summer where I am also involved in the
preparations and would be very happy to see other grokkers there :-)

Meanwhile I am doing some support for the local grok users (which are
already planning big projects based on grok and have many, many
questions ranging from 'how to use macros with grok', via 'AJAX and
grok' to 'how to use plone with grok') and I am trying to understand
more clearly all the concepts related to grok and zope3. Naturally, also
some code is underway.

By the end of next week, I think, I can give a more elaborated sketch of
the project in general. Okay?

I will also be at the 8th annual congress of the German Zope User Group
(DZUG) happening at the beginning of June in Potsdam near Berlin. I know
that some of you will be there too, so this might be a nice opportunity
to meet each other personally.

I hope, this is enough noise for the very beginning, you do not mind the
length of this posting and apologize for the bad English.

Ah, and last not least: many thanks to you, Martijn for the wonderful
world of grok and to all the other contributors which made grok and
zope3 really happen.

Best Regards,

Uli